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People are the most powerful force on world. In economics though, I agree with you. However it's not really Adam Smith's invisible hand since most governments put a lot of restrictions on their market.

Generally I find conspiracy theories to be pretty stupid. Like that "the moon landing was faked" one for instance.

Generally I find conspiracy theories to be pretty stupid. Like that "the moon landing was faked" one for instance.

The name "conspiracy theory" drives a lot of people off. You just have to label someone making some semi-outrageous claims to be a conspiracy theorist and they instantly lose credibility. We mostly think of conspiracy theories in terms of the moon landing or Roswell or JFK, but they really encompass any theory that ascribes alterior motives to a political action or world event. For instance, one of the most widely held conspiracy theories at the moment (though I haven't heard anyone call it that) is that the Bush administration invaded Iraq to gain access to the oil there.

I believe that money, power and fear are extremely powerful forces and that it's easy to believe that people in power would be willing to use it. To cite some examples, there's Watergate, ITT in Chile, the FBI's disruption of student groups during the sixties and seventies, much of the Vietnam War, Enron... now, I'm not one to run around screaming that there are black helicopters and little green men and that the CIA has put a device in my head that compels me to eat at Q'Doba, but am willing to leave open the very real possibility that people in power use it in illegal ways.

“It is a strange paradox that today’s central banks are generally staffed by economists, who by and large profess a belief in a theory which says that their jobs are, at the best, unnecessary, and more likely wealth-destroying. Needless to say, this is not a point widely discussed among respectable economists. Nevertheless, it is an issue worth pondering.”

People are the most powerful force on world. In economics though, I agree with you. However it's not really Adam Smith's invisible hand since most governments put a lot of restrictions on their market.

[Jesus]
Not even enough restrictions on the "oligopolistic free market" imo, then again Smith is so mistaken/misused anyway.
Like most economic books will say his division of labor is wonderfull, amazing etc while he himself gave a great argument against it (if you still care about people ofcourse, so when you're not an economist ):

"The understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments ... the man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding ... and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to be ... But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes pains to prevent it."

Then again about government he had this to say (same would now go for big business ofcourse):
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of
property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the
poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at
all"